Division Street
by we were here
Summary: He has a hole in the side of his face. You may or may not have thrown the bottle. -Written because not all stories deserve a happy ending. COMPLETE.
1. Nightmare

**Disclaimer-**

S.E. Hinton owns _The Outsiders_. _Division Street_ is a song by Thursday.

**Author's Note-**

Here the hell is this, _Division Street,_ a side project I'm hoping will drag me back into the writing world—or not, we'll have to see where this goes. I don't have insomnia and most of this is written at "night" (read: one a.m.) but told in an insomniac's point-of-view, so…whatever. I have no idea if _Division Street _is comprehensible (this first chapter, anyways) but unlike _Inhale_, this actually seems to have a plotline and might go some places in the near future. Constructive criticism would be nice, if you have the time to leave some.

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><p><strong>Division Street<strong>

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><p>He is a leech, a persistent bug sucking the tainted black blood from your neck you can't flick off, buzzing in and out from the darkest corners of your bedroom just when you've finally succumbed to the possibility of slinging your arms over your stomach and stapling them there for forever so your insides won't spill out onto the dirty bed sheets and slip between the floorboards.<p>

Inhale stagnant air through your mouth and close your eyes.

Don't forget that he's rocking back and forth in the corner by the cracked window, broken and bleeding to some sort of death you only wish would come too fast—its middle of the goddamned winter and you're still so fucking uncomfortable in all this _heat_—his silent screams trying to shove themselves down your throat and burrow themselves so deep under your skin if someone had the unfortunate privilege to slice you open in half, you're almost sure all the creepy crawly things would somehow find a way out.

Shut off all internal organs and forget how to breathe. Roughly, on a scale from nearly-impossible-to-achievable, you've got almost three whole minutes of absolutely _nothing_. A nothing that is, seemingly, deafeningly endless besides the beating of your hollow heart against your swollen ribs and the uncomfortable tightness of your decaying lungs as they squeeze together to force in oxygen you don't want.

Hair plastered to your flushed cheeks, you, somehow, are able to twist your aching limbs into a ball. The masochistic hunger in the hollow of your chest heightens to a boiling point.

Pray to God that the son of a bitch doesn't come any closer, because if he did—his cold blood dripping onto your jaw line, the result of a bottle smashed into the corner of his face that you maybe or maybe didn't cause, you can't remember anymore; hot breath pleading on the shell of your ear—_help me_—fingernails as sharp as scalpels tearing you apart at the seams, searching for a hand that won't hold his—you don't really know what you'd do.

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><p>It wasn't always like this.<p>

At first, whenever you caught the faint trickle of various blue-green bruises and infected scars branded into his dark skin underneath the shitty bathroom lighting as you tried to stop him from quivering—the only way you knew how was to grip his chin and shove a fist into his mouth while you took a dirty wash cloth from the cabinet and tried to, somehow, smear off all the sin, like you of all people in this world could erase all the bad by making it worse—something inside your chest would implode and you'd find yourself breathless and exasperated against your will.

Anger for what, at the time, you didn't know, until this _kept _happening, until every other week he was coming to you for help he otherwise didn't know how to ask for. Gradually, you watched the bruises get larger and the scars stretch longer and the strangulation marks get more prominent and you'd just lean against the sink or the doorjamb, dirty wash cloth slung over your shoulder and venomous teeth sinking into the inside of your cheek so you wouldn't brand him as your own piece of shit—how wonderful that plan fucking worked out, huh?—tongue inflated with lies you didn't know how to say because, sometimes, words just weren't enough.

There are no words in the English language for the emotions you felt during those long, long nights. To watch him suffer was indescribable, a pain you'd gladly drown yourself in for an eternity if it meant he wouldn't have to deal with this alone.

It was only because you hated him out of pity, you told yourself. Because he accepted you by doing the worst possible thing he ever could_—loving_ you—for your faults and looked up to you as something valuable—like you were the only reason he breathed.

But he had it all wrong, you wanted to scream, he was the reason _you _breathed, not the other way around. Couldn't he see that you were both fucked over from the start—one too cynical and experienced while the other was too vulnerable and innocent? Couldn't he see that every time you fixed him, another part of you broke? Couldn't he see the infinite damage he'd caused—the worried crease between your brows and the frown lines pulling your whole face down into a permanent scowl and the way your muscles itched and tensed to rip his from their sockets whenever he accidentally tripped over a rock or a shoelace he forgot to tie?

Couldn't he—

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><p>Son of a bitch is standing at the foot of the bed.<p>

You know this because, even though your eyes are closed, you saw the shadows move as he crawled across the floor and heard the springs sink down and rise up as he pressed his bloody palms onto the mattress to push himself onto his feet.

The air around you is hot and cold all at once—full of vomit and blood and sweat and cigarette smoke and the remaining shards of a three-day bottle of whiskey you'd left sitting on the bedside table. You can't hear anything besides his labored breathing and the tick of the alarm clock as time inevitably pushes forward.

Panic seizes your body into a nightmare as the realization hits.

He is going to kill you. He is going to kill you. _He is going to fucking kill you._

You cannot breathe.

Suddenly, so quick the barest parts of your consciousness acknowledge what is going on, the mattress groans and then he is leaning over you. His knees are on your thighs, his head over your chest. And, oh, god, his_ hands_—

You are paralyzed with fear. You cannot think of a single way to get him off of you without killing you both.

He is hot, hotter than the sun and the stars and the Oklahoma desert combined. So hot his very presence is suffocating. The metal that claws itself into your jugular does nothing to stop the beads of sweat from trickling down your forehead.

His breath is blowing on the shell of your ear, the tickle of cold blood dribbling down from his jaw line onto yours where his grin smears into your cheek.

He will make you bleed for him because he is strong. So much stronger than you…

_See?_

The metal gnaws greedily and a warm, sticky wetness begins to pool down your collarbone and then your chest. You jerk away in pain, dried-up lungs choking out his name, gasping for air that is anything but dry.

He doesn't stop.

The tip of the metal drags over your shirt, tearing it down the middle, and your chest cavity and stomach are exposed to the core. Air filters into the tight spaces between your ribs and stings like salt poured on an open wound.

_Look at what you did._

The metal digs deeper—

Your ears buzz with fireflies that missed their expiration date and the dull sense of him above, humming a song you don't recognize.

If you reach down and grab the metal from him in a last attempt to save you from yourself, he'll label this a sign of weakness and your last words would be a scream. If you swing your arm out you'll have half-a-second to push him so hard he won't have any time to understand what's going on because he'll already be dead.

—and deeper—

_Look at what you fucking did to me._

—the weight crushing you to the mattress lifts as Johnny pries your eyes open with his bloody fingernails and turns your head towards the cracked window where the gray-yellow sun, the bane of your existence, gets caught between the cheap aluminum blinds you'd installed to block all of the lights out—your mother always said your eyes were too pretty a blue for a man so used to spending half his life hiding in the dark—

"Wake up."

Press your fist into your mouth to keep from screaming.


	2. Possession

He has a hole in the left side of his face.

Half of the dark flesh that was there last night is now missing; torn by some invisible force that looks like the piss-yellow colored glass of a bottle you may or may not have thrown.

It's so bright in here—a dizzyingly blurred kind that accompanies the darkest of nights spent running from the nightmare playing behind your closed eyelids like a broken movie reel, over and over and over again—you can't seem to focus on anything else besides the shriveled red blood cells and exposed white tendons of bone glaring at you.

He has removed his hands from your shoulders and sunk back into the corner of the room where he slumps against the edge of the dresser in some kind of exhausted defeat from fighting off all the inner demons you can't find the strength to do, his head leaning back on the rotting wooden wall. Cautious, he watches your every move through his right eye, the other swollen shut by popped blood cells and glued eyelashes laced together like the stitches you know he'll need. Bruise-like shadows, a sickening purple-black tint, crowd around the remaining flesh and taunt your empty stomach.

You look away, then, fidgeting, more so horrified by the knowledge that he's still in the same goddamned room as you rather than uncomfortable at the ghastly sight.

You know that he knows that he has nowhere else to go but down the same rabbit hole as you, though some long lost part of you still aches for him to grasp onto the realization that he can run but he can't hide. Because no matter how many miles he puts between you and him you know he'll come crawling back the first chance he gets and that's the worst part about all of this.

Living with the constant worry that, if you decided to drop off the face of the earth tomorrow morning, he would follow you to the fucking edge and not ask a single question. It's the one relationship in your life that never seems to stay constant, predictable—an hour or two in your presence on a bad night could leave you seeing red and him shoved against the bathroom door, your knee between his to hold him there, your elbow in his chest to keep him from shoving you away as you tried to clean up the mess you didn't mean to cause. He's the only thing holding you down to this bumblefuck town in the middle of the American desert—if he wasn't so motherfucking pathetic you would've hopped a train back to New York a long time ago and never looked back, not even once.

You open your mouth and try to say his name, though your tongue doesn't know how to roll over your teeth and your spit doesn't know how to collect on the back of your canines and your gums don't know how to smack together and say _Johnny_ because _Johnny_ is all you know how to say and it's not like you can just form a fucking sentence with just _Johnny_, anyways.

Your brain is about to ooze out through your eyeballs, it is pounding so hard against your skull and eardrums and your blood is pulsing under your skin, so fast, fast, fast you're surprised you don't get lost in the swish-swish motion, hums like the song he sang in your nightmare—and then his lips are moving and so are yours and your mouth is drier than the cold December air rushing in through the cracked window—and he's whispering about he doesn't have a ride home and you're asking him why he's still here in a voice that's loud even to your own deaf ears, because, really, _why the fuck is he still fucking here! _You both know it'll be either you or someone else who kills him one day but at least he'll let you help him clean himself up first, it's only fair, right—

"I'm fine" rushes out in one syllable and you want to laugh but your chest is on fire—did you swallow a lit cigarette or are you actually sliced straight down the middle?—nope, you're not, there isn't a lick of a blade or blood from your collarbone to your belly button thank god—and within all this heated exchange of a conversation you won't remember this afternoon he's limped across the room and is staring at the door in pity, his last attempt to escape, fingers reaching for the knob that will lead him down the hall and then the stairs and then through the empty bar and outside into the parking lot and then the outside world if he looks for it hard enough.

You want him to stay. You want him to leave.

This is when you realize that you know and don't know what you want and don't want.

You sit up and the room spins at an odd angle, all colors and blurred shadows and the wheezing-sound his throat makes when he exhales your name.

"No, Dally."

Fuck.

Your insides are going to fall out. There's a hole in your chest and your insides are going to fall out onto the floor like they did last night and Johnny will pick them up for you and rearrange them back in your body so that they fit.

No. No. No

He doesn't understand how much you fucking need him. How, if he turns away, if he won't let you clean up the mess you made, you'll…you'll _break_…you'll track him down and kill him with your own fucking hands and wish you hadn't…

"Please. Don't go."

But you don't know how to say that.


	3. Lights out

He left.

Then you turned away and threw up on yourself and the floor.


	4. Repercussions

Mr. Timothy Allen Shepard is the lone bastard whose living purpose is to either put you in your bed or drag you out of it. You've never really considered him as a close friend or a distant enemy, just a place-holder stuck in the middle to balance everything out in your shitty life when you can't—for a clearer definition you are each other's worst halves and best selves all at once—so you're almost surprised when he shows up in the doorframe wearing that goddamned grin you hate so fucking much.

You haven't moved an inch since Johnny left god-knows-how-long-ago, just stared at the blood splatter on the walls and your bed sheets and the vomit that had crawled out of your mouth when he'd shut the door behind him in a final attempt to save him from himself. You didn't think about it not because you _couldn't _think about it but because you didn't want to remember how he'd looked writhing under you against the door and then the wall and then the floor…

The blurred red letters on the alarm clock swim into your eyes and scream that it's something past four p.m. and not nearly ten o'clock. The day begins in the middle of the night but Shepard's not eating any of your bullshit this time.

Tim steps into the room, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and you want to hide. Curl up into a little ball like the pussy you are and tell him to fuck off because you can't breathe, it hurts so much! He_ trusted_ you not to hurt him and you hurt him anyways,you sick motherfucking bastard, you couldn't just cut him from the umbilical cord and be done with it—you had to take the road less traveledand lie through the sin burning the enamel off your teeth, tell him that you couldn't fucking do this anymore

"Do what?" he'd asked, looking at you from under those thick eyelashes like he didn't already know what you were talking about, and maybe he really didn't—he was so fragile, so innocent…broken and healed and broken again. It only made sense for you to protect him from the rest of the world by making him the center of yours.

You'd sneered into his face that he knew exactly what the fuck you were talking about—he'd been playing you for weeks on end and you were sick of him, of his bitching and his messes that you had to clean up and his voice. You never meant for it to get so out of hand, you just wanted it all to stop because you couldn't take it anymore! You'd reached your breaking point and fucking snapped, broke in half like a bone under too much pressure.

And that's when it happened.

You'd taken one step forwards and he'd taken one step back, pinning himself between you and the closed door. Infuriated, you'd pressed your shaking palms on either side of his head so you wouldn't punch him in the face, the wood vibrating from the music resonating downstairs, and he'd opened his mouth as if he was going to ask a question but nothing came out because you'd already smashed his teeth into yours and it was so sweetly wrong and bitterly right—he tasted like cola syrup and something else, like mint, only it wasn't, it was something stronger that hissed at your tongue and made you claw at the denim covering his skin. You'd wanted him like you'd wanted nothing else in your life before, a burning desire that made your head spin and your heart stop beating, because couldn't he see that you needed him and in a sick, twisted kind of way he needed you, too?

You forget that Tim is in the room until he clears his throat and narrows his eyes. He's trying to see you through the cloud of smoke circling round his head and for once you're pissed off that he's smart enough not to ask questions. You hate Tim because he's your best-worst friend and everything else under the sunless sky and you want to kill him—leave his body to rot on the bathroom floor for all the bugs and rats to pick at with their sharp claws and venomous teeth.

Goddamn.

You exhale a shaky breath, aching for the kiss of a cigarette and Johnny's pulse thumming under your fingertips as you destroyed him like the savage you are from the inside out, and hope that Tim doesn't notice you haven't been paying attention for the past five minutes to whatever crap he's talking about now.

"…at least thought you'd be interested. It's a shitty deal—you're gonna hafta drive all the way out there by yourself since the kid who told me he was gonna do it dropped out at the last minute, the dumbfuck. Shipment's gonna be in by Friday at the latest so you'd have to leave tonight if you're gonna get there on time…I can't keep wasting all this fuckin' time acting for everybody else so if you're gonna do it then tell me now 'cause I got shit to do, Winston…"

Adrenaline shoots through your veins at the opportunity, dull electrolytes awaken your brain and suddenly the world seems a little less black around the edges, now more of a diluted dark gray. The last time you participated in a drug deal was when you were ten in New York—the repercussion of that was being sent here, to Tulsa and Hades' seven dogs and the fiery pits of hell.

"When do I stop driving?"

Tim shakes his head, in disgust or disbelief, you can't tell, calls you a dumbass for not paying attention and repeats for what he says is the thousandth time, "When you reach Oke City".

Then Tim grins that goddamned grin you hate so fucking much and you can't help but grin, too, because even though you still can't breathe whenever you think about last night and all the ones before that, deep down you know that you're not doing this for Tim but for Johnny…

And, at the end of the day, if he's learned anything about you it should be that you don't think twice.


	5. Oklahoma City

The tires of Tim's borrowed Charger roll over the border at midnight.

Although it's not your favorite place in the world—you've only been a couple of times with Buck for some rodeos awhile back and have been turning down the offers ever since—Oklahoma City is a shady place with even shadier people and you're going to have to watch your back if you want to make it out of this alive.

You hoped that the drive out here and the fresh air would've made your head clear, but the adrenaline's long-gone worn off and each time you blink it's like you're reliving the nightmare all over again, only this time, you're wide awake.

Anxious, you tap out the lighter on the dashboard and hold the tip of a cigarette above the flame, shivering in your jacket from the cold air blowing in through the open windows. You take a long drag, holding the smoke in until your lungs burn, and exhale as you look out the dashboard and into the neon lights blurring into one another ahead—bright lights, big city—and then at the vast blackness off in the distance, so large you think the night will swallow you whole if you sit here any longer.

You toss the cigarette out the window, pull off the shoulder of the deserted highway and continue to drive one-handed, the other tugging at your hair the way Sylvia does on a good night, taking in the sites with large eyes like you're a fucking tourist because you don't want to go to sleep just yet or ever again. Truthfully, you'd rather waste the small amount of money you have on a semi-decent motel room than on a couple of beers. Waking up tomorrow morning in a gutter on a street you've never been down isn't so much fun when you're alone and is a shitty move and a low blow to Tim's newfound respect for you.

You can't take any more chances to fuck up—you're already in so deep over your head and you're still trying to tread fucking water like you of all people know how to swim.

The whole city is pretty much dead at this hour, though there are more than enough people still crowded around street corners and sidewalks to make you curl your fingers tighter around the steering wheel, uneasy. The black sky has opened up to let snow fall through; little white flakes sticking to whatever surface won't wipe them off. As each block melts under the Charger's tires when you drive deeper and deeper into the heart of hell, you wonder how far you're going to go down before you actually drown.

You pass a couple of open motels but none look promising—either the OPEN signs are barely alive or you can see the shadows moving behind the cheap curtains, lit by yellow-green dingy lights that remind you too much of the interrogation room at the Tulsa County Police Department and all the time you've spent there.

You finally settle on a motel that doesn't look too crowded or creepy and park alongside the sidewalk, trying to blend in with the other cars as much as you can so you don't stick out like a candy-ass. You roll up the windows in case it snows harder over the six hours you'll be stuck inside, grab Tim's .45 and the four bullets from the glove compartment and get out of the Charger, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth so you won't freak out at the three-hundred-and-sixty minutes you have to spend staring at the ceiling.

The man standing at the front desk when you walk in the front door looks up from hisnewspaper, grunts something that sounds like "hello" and eyes you suspiciously, as if he can see the heater tucked into your waistband. Neither of you make eye contact during the five minutes he spends tucking your five dollars into his pocket nor producing a key to Room 11—only when you turn and start walking away does he ask what you're doing here "since it's so close to Christmas, son."

You say "business" a little too acidly and this sends his already-high eyebrows up into his wrinkly forehead. He doesn't say anything after that, just grumbles into his newspaper about "where the manners went with these damn kids, nowadays" and you bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep from smirking.

Room 11 is the third to last room on the left side of the horribly-decorated-and-lighted corridor, the size of a fucking closet which definitely isn't good for your sudden claustrophobia. It is empty besides a cot and an end table shoved up against one of the off-white walls and you want to throw up because the room smells like pure piss but hold it down—God knows there will be plenty of time for that later.

It only takes you three seconds to lock the door and another three to cross the room to the bed, the mattress so hard it's like trying to mold yourself into cement. You remove the heater from your waistband and place it on the bedside table, then kick the probably-infected-with-semen blanket off and focus your tired eyes to trace patterns that aren't really there on the stained ceiling, all the while not daring to turn off the light.

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><p>By the time the sun begins to rise through the clouds, the only color in this dreary city, the cracked rearview mirror in the Charger tells you that your eyes are red-rimmed and burning from exhaustion, face sallow and lips chapped. Hastily, before you give yourself anymore time to think, you flick on the radio to a random station and the car fills with static. You pull out the piece of paper Tim had written the directions on and try to read his hand-writing in the harsh glare coming off the windshield at a red light—the only parts you're able to understand are what streets to not turn on and what alleway to look out for.<p>

It's only a little past dawn but already the streets are swarming with people, mostly middle-class men dotting the corners in their business suits and briefcases, a herd of black sheep heading to their jobs in the looming buildings above or hung-over sons of bitches absentmindedly walking around in a stupor just because they can. This reminds you, strangely, of home and all the people you've left behind and you have to swallow down the acid that climbs up your esophagus so you won't vomit.

The light turns green and you floor the pedal down, ready to get this over with because you can't nearly take all this fucking silence that's been building in your head, barely missing a group of men as you turn to the right and disappear into a dead-end alleyway. No sunlight slips between the two apartment buildings on either side so you're left in complete blackness, headlights filtering across the bumper of a souped-up Ford hugging the brick wall.

You roll to a slow stop and park the Charger a couple meters away, lighting up a cigarette to calm down the sudden nerves. You squint into the shadows, trying to make out the three hunched shapes—two men are tall, one a lanky blonde while the other is dark-haired and built like a bull, all muscle and intimidation; the third bald, short and stocky. The taller blonde turns his head, catches your eye and whispers something into the dark-haired man's ear, whose booming laughter flips your stomach over.

You finger for the heater still in your waistband to remind yourself that it's there and that you know how to use it and take another drag off your cigarette before getting out of the car. You lean up against the door and frown, facial expression impassive while your insides are battling each other to the death.

The blonde turns to you, then, and you curl your fingers into the palms of your hands, sure you'll beat the shit out of him if he says anything else that you can't hear since you need to know _every fucking thing_.

He smiles and the headlight catches his crooked teeth, turning them yellow-white, and sticks out his hand. You don't cross over the small space between you and the three men and shake on it.

You're here because Tim sent you to get the weed or whatever the fuck he's trying to sell this time; not to meet any redneck queers along the way and this is complete crap if they think otherwise. You already know too many of people like them in Tulsa and don't want to expand your social circle anymore than one person and one person only who won't talk to you or look at you or wish he was you ever again and it's your entire fault…

The blonde introduces himself as Nate in a funny accent that sounds like he's from Arkansas—you have to remind yourself to not raise your eyebrows—and then gestures to the dark-haired guy next to him—Billy—and the short fatty in front—Back-up—"just in case things got outta hand, you see". You don't see anything.

Nate, you realize with a sour taste on the back of your tongue, is almost as dumb as he is attractive. And God knows that isn't very much.

You tell them your name's not important, you're just here to help co-sign the deal, anyways, and Nate looks puzzled but doesn't say anything else. He motions for Back-up to open the backseat door, sullen.

This is one of the many steps you don't understand about drug dealing. In order for the deal to go down, a good, civilized patron like you has to drive three-and-a-half hours into the middle of No Man's Land, where there are most likely cops on every street corner waiting to bust someone's unlucky ass; park the car in an alleyway where there are three guys lined up against the wall like a fucking hostage;then literally_ buy_ the drugs off of them with your own hard-earned money and drive three-and-a-half hours to get home just to re-sell the goddamn drugs and act all High-and-Mighty as if you imported them yourself.

Bull. Shit.

A few minutes pass by in silence, so loud you can hear Back-up's heavy breathing as he tries to wrestle a suitcase full of weed you won't get high on out from the backseat. He finally emerges after ten struggling minutes; sweaty and pudgy face colored with red splotches, waddles over to you and plops the suitcase down at your feet.

Nate claps his hands—_motherfucking claps his hands!—_and says, "We'll take it from here." He looks at you while he says this and you fish out the seventy dollars Tim gave you to pay for the drugs and hand it to Back-up, who counts it before waddling back over to Nate, who counts it once again under his breath. Like you don't know how to count. Ha!

Nate smiles broadly, as if you've somehow saved his life by doing this, say "thanks, man" and you want to spit in his face for being so cliché. You nod, one of the only body movements you've been able to do for the past two days without breathing, and pick up the suitcase's handle. It's sweaty and sticky from Back-up's harsh hold and you crinkle your nose in disgust as you open the car door, slide in and toss the suitcase into the passenger seat.

You start the engine to block out Nate's annoying, nasally voice of how he hopes "we'll be able to do this again sometime"—do what?—and peel out of the alleyway and onto Main Street, the cup of coffee you'd barely been able to swallow down earlier threatening to come back up.

You drive home with sin burning the enamel off your teeth, reborn for all the wrong reasons, wondering all the while what the hell you did to deserve a life like this.


	6. Blackout

You're so cold you feel alive.

The stable is abandoned—has been for awhile now, you briefly recall, when the rodeos Buck had you signed up for suddenly stopped at a standstill because the manager, Brennan, said the temperature was too dangerously low for the horses to kick you off their asses in the outdoor stadium. You'd laughed it off and said that it didn't matter, you would ride anyways; it was too hot for the winter wind you couldn't feel run through your hair and hollow inside your bones.

You're straddling one of the rafters overlooking the stalls, somewhere between half-stoned out of your fucking mind—or at least what's left of it, which, to begin with, wasn't a whole goddamned lot—and home, a place you no longer have the privilege to identify on a map.

It smells like horse shit and rotting meat and hay and the blunt you just lit up too long of a time ago and you want to roll up another, want to inhale the whole fucking briefcase of shit drugs Tim had you drive out all the way to Oklahoma City for and then back, only so he could slap you on the arm and warn you, smugly, that the Darrel Curtis and Co. were out to strip you of your own skin and nail you to a Cross for whatever shit you pulled this time.

You don't know why you're here, really, you fucking don't. You cannot breathe because this monster, this emptiness inside of you is swallowing you whole and will kill you before you kill yourself.

The floor spins underneath you, the beasts blurring into the color of his eyes—black, coal black and bloodshot, like he hadn't slept for days, taking in everything and giving away nothing. You should have been fucking_ terrified_ by this helplessness, this vulnerability, but right then, in that single moment as he asked you to help him around the edge of a broken jaw, half-hidden in the darkness, you couldn't feel the right kind of fear.

Suddenly it's like you're too far away from the ground. You're going to fall and you're too fucking far away.

You slip one leg over the beam and rest your forehead against the old wood, clutching your lighter to your chest like it is a teddy bear.

Shit.

You're going to throw up.

No. No. No.

The wood digs into your forehead.

The horses whimper, "Dally."

You pretend he's saying your name. You pretend he's calling you back.


	7. Silence

The first feeling is exhilaration.

Your arms hit the ground. The sound is similar to a metal rod striking against glass, only this time it is louder, so much louder in all this silence. Deafening.

Pure motherfucking exhilaration.

Beside you, your lighter is the lost-needle-gone-found in the haystack. The gasoline inside the orange plastic leaks out onto the hay from a jagged crack.

And then, oh. _Oh—_

The second feeling is pain.

You hold your breath for a moment, pick your head up from the straw and shake your neck, just to make sure that you can.

A horse tilts above you, its breath an ice cube on your smoldering back. You don't look at it in the eye—your field of vision is a messy red stream of wetness dripping down from a gash in the middle of what feels like your forehead, which probably means, somewhere, your skull is cracked open.

Roll onto your back, notice how your right hand stays pinned, tucked grotesquely under your arm, fingers bent back towards your elbow. Flex your ankles to the right, left, curl your toes into the soles of your worn-out shoes; focus your straining attention on how the muscles, tendons and bones shift perfectly in synchronized order.

Colors explode behind your open eyelids. The pain is thumming, electric; a high in the sickest of ways.

Sit up and let cold air slice into your chest cavity. Wiggle the five fingers of your left hand and gingerly lift the hem of your shirt to touch the tender flesh underneath; then gasp as your stomach squeezes against broken ribs and the pain roars into a dull fire.

The third feeling is nausea.

Pull yourself up by pressing your back against a beam nailed into the floor, supporting the rafters you just fell off of, and pushing all your weight down on your ankles. You're synonymous to a snapped rubber band, and, somehow by the grace of God Himself and all His Saints, are able to stumble through the red haze and out into the white-hot night, your left arm wrapped around your torso to keep your ribs and internal organs from falling out, your broken wrist dangling off to the side.

Fifteen minutes pass by before the car door is fumbled open. You collapse into the seat, exhausted, your forehead thumping soundlessly against the steering wheel. The wetness—blood?—drips down your face at a messy angle, the only form of tears you're able to cry; smears into the crevasses between the car seats and holes in your clothes. Your teeth chatter, you're so cold…

A distant part of you says that the nearest hospital is almost an hours' worth of driving, heading back in the direction you just came from, and if you want to survive, you're going to have to put your feet on those pedals pretty goddamn fast. You want to quit—although quitters never win, do they?—but oh, God,_ you're just so fucking tired of trying not to breathe._

See their faces, one by one, when they appear from behind the red haze. Shepard's, a cigarette hanging out of his sneered mouth in the doorway of your room at Buck's, his eyes darker than the night itself; and then Darry's, his face contorted into so many exasperating lines his own glare is lost in the chaos; and lest you forget Two-Bit's, glinted off the metal of his switchblade, thin lips pulled back to bare teeth every grizzly bear would kill for—Sodapops's—Steve's—Ponyboy's—

This pain is like no other you have ever felt before. It is unbearable. You cannot swim away; the current is much too strong: It is pulling you under, asphyxiating you, and if you do not move, a voice begs into your ear—it's _his,_ it's always been fucking his, why hadn't you realized this earlier?—you will die.

You know what will happen if you live, if you go back.

The Darrel Curtis and Co. will drag you out into the miles of cornfield stretching just beyond Tulsa. They will shove a cloth down your throat so, even if you do scream, no one will hear. They will push their switchblades under your skin and tear off your eyelids with their teeth and break the rest of your bones with their hands. You will not fight back, not even spit on their shoes or raise a fist—not once—because this is your deliverance to Hades and his seven dogs and the fiery pits of Hell. A resurrection performed by Jesus' very own twelve Disciples.

You wish for him—Johnny—to not be there, to see you slaughtered like a cow, knowing there was nothing in this world he could possibly do to make them stop; nor afterwards, as your lifeless body is tossed into the snowdrifts, black against white.

But wishes, of course, are for children.


	8. Division Street

He looks peaceful when he sleeps.

His closed eyes are the size of bruised walnuts—even from this distance, perched outside his window on the rooftop, you can see the remains of dry blood and clustered lashes. The left side of his face is completely covered in gauze, from his temple to the edge of his jaw a bright burst of red-brown and white.

You're leaning so close to the window the tip of your nose is brushing against the cold glass and your breath is fogging it up. Some part of you, distant and vague, is glad that it's the middle of fucking December because that means you won't be climbing into any bedrooms tonight, though you wouldn't mind breaking another hand just trying to punch your fist through the surface.

You're not really sure why the fuck you're up here, stalking some pathetic kid who'd rather have you alive than dead, and for the last time you can't blame him for it. The letter you wrote isn't even half a page's worth and is lodged between one of the panes, stained with blood splatters and black ink.

It plays in your head, this fake movie, over and over and over:

He'll find the letter in the morning. He'll be a little disoriented, stumble across his room and find it, the little square piece of paper with your ring wrapped inside like a little fucking Christmas present, the one you rolled off that Soc. He'll let the ring fall to the floor and grope the letter in his little hands, brow furrowed because he's curious, wondering what the hell it is—and then, after it's unfolded, he'll stand there, with the sunlight streaming into his eyes, and reread those words again and again and again. Memorize them, fucking taste them on his tongue, the back of his teeth, the phlegm at the bottom of his throat…

You broke him into a million little pieces and fucking cracked yourself in half. If anything, this is almost a good way to go. To die, a slow, slow descent unto Hell. You remind yourself that you're doing this for him,_ only_ him and no one else, not even yourself—because, in a sick, twisted kind of way, you deserved him and he deserved you—

Right?

* * *

><p>You are not surprised to notice that it takes both Sodapop and Two-Bit to restrain Darry from murdering you on his own front lawn.<p>

It was some time past night but not nearly morning when you pulled alongside the Curtis' house. Now, as you look back on this fragile, insignificant detail, you think it's almost ironic how it took less time for the Darrel Curtis and Co. to crawl outside than it took for you to crawl out of the front seat.

You're grinning, half-hidden in the shadows, and even through all the pain of your failed suicidal attempt—had to get_ him_ out of your head somehow, had to find a way to get him the fuck out—and all the pain not yet inflicted on your cadaver, in all this darkness you still feel naked: exposed. A bacterial studied in a Petri dish. Like at any moment, the anticipation will be too much to overcome, and the microscopic lens will be zoomed in too close and therefore the experiment will be ruined.

Blink.

Darry's face has turned the eggplant shade of purple. Wonder if his blood, on the rarity he was to bleed in this situation, is the same color as yours—black. You are a monster and nothing but—no more, no less—synonymous to the first stage of terminal cancer; the festering of an open wound. A man intent on killing the already deceased.

Ha. What a fucking joke.

Darry is asking you how you could possibly ever do this to a person you loved. "_Vandalize _him," he swears, breathless from all the emotions that have been leaving him sleep-deprived for days. "How could you—how could you—" his voice cracks in half.

This is a side of Darry you haven't seen since his parents' funeral, and if you were able to feel fear, feel anything at all, it would be right now. He is stuck in one place, one moment, on rewind. Never moving forward, never moving back. In a way, he reminds you of himself; and as shallow the pond is in depth, you're still there, lurking. Waiting.

He wants the truth to be drawn out of you in words. You want the truth to be drawn out in blood. There is no middle ground.

It was hard, at first, to come to the terms that you would not make it out of this conversation alive. Never be able to trace the outlines of his body, that poor, little bastard's body, with your eyes; tongue; teeth, hands—never be able to hear him say your name, only six letters, two syllables, sometimes three if you twisted him inside himself far enough—never be able to touch all that dark skin burrowed underneath that denim, soft no matter how many bruises were there—never be able to smell the odd combination of cola syrup and cheap cigarettes and the grass after it rains lingering on the tips of his hair—the thoughts were nearly unfathomable. But you forced yourself to sit there in the car anyways; forced his face to appear from behind your eyelids, just so you could catch a last glimpse of the first-and-last life you'd saved to destroy, all those years ago.

Two-Bit, unlike Darry, who is focusing on some point in the distance above your head, and Sodapop, who is looking at the patches of dry grass at his feet; is staring you straight in the eye. He has flipped out his switchblade, the silver metal glittering like diamonds in the flickering glow of the porch light. His lips move around a disgusted sneer—in response, Sodapop says a word back, their voices muted by the pounding of blood in your ears.

You find words to say in the back of your throat in response to Darry's heave—they are absolutely vile and disrespecting and untrue, the worst words you have ever said—"That's the difference between you and me. I never fucking loved him, not at all"—and all hell breaks loose.

There is no point in restraining Darry this time. He breaks through the makeshift cage of Two-Bit and Sodapop's arms and legs and crashes into you before you have a chance to blink, the unexpected weight of his body—so heavy—he sends you both flying to the ground. You roll over one another, two bulls in a china shop, onto the gravel of the driveway—rocks are digging into your back, his fists are shaking and breaking your cheekbones and your nose and then his fingers are around your throat, the back of your head hitting the pavement over and over and over so hard you see stars, a sharp crack like bees dying shutters down your spine—

And then, suddenly, the weight is lifted off and the tip of Two-Bit's blade is edging itself into your throat—you try to exhale air and spit out blood instead, black in the silver moonlight, and feel the metal scratching against your windpipe. Above you, Two-Bit is a tittering box of nerves about to spring loose and Sodapop is cursing halfheartedly at Darry because he's disappointed. He's trying to convince Darry that he shouldn't kill you, he _can't_ kill you, but Darry doesn't want to listen—he's as stubborn as an ox, as stubborn as fucking Ponyboy.

Kill me, you try to say, although the words come out in an uncomfortable gurgle and your tongue is too fat to fit inside your mouth. Your chest cavity is on fire—Darry probably broke a few more ribs just from pounding you into the fucking ground—and you're so delirious, so out of it, you could almost swear that, from your peripheral vision, you saw the curtain in the Curtis' living room be parted aside by a hand, a small dark hand with stubby fingers and bitten off nails—

Two-Bit grabs your chin roughly and jerks your head up so your eyes meet his, the blade digging in deeper—another inch or two and he will have sliced off your Adam's apple. His eyes, like yours, are clouded over: slush-colored and rimmed by heavy bags, thin lips spread into one grim line. This is what irks you the most, how he's so serious all of a goddamn sudden, able to murder you with a simple flick of his wrist and look like he doesn't give a rat's ass while he does it.

You're good at dying—you've craved the masochistic hunger of control when nothing else would see-fit, relying on the blackest of nights as your only companion on this long journey into oblivion.

You sway on your feet; black splotches beginning to seep through the red haze of your vision and clot out everything else. Almost there now, just a little while longer…

Force yourself to look at Two-Bit's narrowed eyes, Sodapop's drawn face, Darry's shaking fists balled at his sides—and notice, a pain swallowing your whole being, that the one person who should've been there all along is not.

Inhale stagnant air through your mouth and close your eyes.

Don't forget that he's not actually here but at his own house, where he'd been left to decay all because of you, the fucking son of a bitch. He's dreaming, and maybe his nightmares are about you, maybe not—hopefully not, you can't take anymore guilt with you, your baggage will be so heavy at the gates of Hell you'll have to die twice just to be allowed entrance.

Someone is yelling because your blood is on their hands, too much blood is on the tip of their knife that keeps going in deeper—

_Wake the fuck up, Dallas—_

—and deeper—

_Goddamnit I'm talking to you—_

—and deeper—

Press your fist into your mouth and wonder if Johnny can hear you scream.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note-<strong>

_Division Street _was partially inspired by a quote from Sylvia Plath; "Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I have a call."

Stay tuned for Dallas' letter to Johnny; it may show up within the next few days, wink wink...

As always, thank you for reading and taking this journey with me. I appreciate it very much and I'm so happy of all the response this has received so far, I can't believe it! :)

-Catherine


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